Brain: Monday, With Little To Think

[elfs]

No. Absolutely Not

In a desperate bid to "own the newscycle" and occupy the American imagination one last time, the McCain campaign is weighing the option of having Bristol & Levi carry off their shotgun wedding just days before the election.

What's in the Bailout, Anyway?

Henry Blodget explains it all.

Radley Balko finds a gem...

Balko quotes Frank from 2003:

These two entities -- Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- are not facing any kind of financial crisis. The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.

Let's be clear, though: Fannie and Freddie were not the main problem. They didn't write subprime loans. They did completely occupy the financial sector above subprime, especially for first-time homebuyers. The main problem came from other banks (WaMu, for example) that did participate in the sub-prime mortgage market, and generate a lot of lousy "underwater" mortgages.

Peak Meat

But guess what? The machinery that's pumped so much meat into our lives over the last half century was never built to last, and now it's breaking down big-time. Feed is more expensive. Gasoline is more expensive. Milk, rice, butter, corn--it's all going through the roof. And for the foreseeable future, it's not coming back down.

(via Andrew Sullivan)

More on Rick Davis: Anonymous sources, caution is advised

Remember the Rick Davis story I blogged about last week, the one for which I took a bit of criticism?

Okay, bear with the pundits on this. Newsweek and Josh Marshall have put together another line of the story. First, although Rick Davis "isn't taking any checks from Davis Manafort," he still has equity in that company. As long as the company continues to grow, Davis continues to make money, even if he's not actually handling any of the cash right now. So Freddie Mac continuing to pour money into a company, even though the only expert on Freddie Mac has "severed his working relationship" with it-- but keeps his equity stake in it-- looks a little dubious.

Now it gets ugly. McCain's campaign was short on cash back before July, all campaigning switched to an "all volunteer" force, and Davis publicly stopped drawing his $20,000 a month salary from the McCain campaign for a while. When the cash crunch was over and the donations started to come in again, the McCain campaign quietly turned over $90,000 to Davis Manafort for unspecified work.

On top of that, Newsweek reports that 3eDC.com, a "web development firm" (whose website looks like one of those off-the-shelf things you can buy for fifty bucks or so) received $970,000 for unspecified "web services." 3eDC.com turns out to be owned by two people: Davis, and Manafort.

Josh Marshall now reports that 3eDC.com has only ever had one client: the McCain campaign. It was constructed soley to take money from the campaign and perform "unspecified" services.

John McCain has come across recently as a distracted and distractable man. I'm sorry, but if this story is true (and it's so bizarre and ugly I have trouble believing it), then Rick Davis has found a way to funnel upwards of a million dollars of campaign contributor's money into an account he owns. Later, he'll be free to draw upon that money when the campaign is over, the cameras are shut off and the journalists all go on to cover other things.

And nothing much to say about the debates. I only watched them in re-runs. I don't buy McCain's "I don't look at the other person in a debate, I'm too busy thinking" line. I think he was both contemptuous of Obama and afraid that he might lose to Obama. The polls show that he did; Barack Obama was better able to communicate to Americans about the things Americans care about, and he successfully (and graciously) avoided looking like the scary black dude that McCain surrogates have tried to portray. That is all.

Comments

Peak meat?

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

I've got mine... =};-3

Seriously, I hadn't heard this line, but that may be because I eat a lot less meat than I used to. Not so much going vegetarian, but limiting the amount to just what's needed. Those 46-oz monsters at Stuart Angus are ridiculous.

[bikerwalla.livejournal.com]

I predict a huge resurgence in farmers' markets.

[doodlesthegreat.livejournal.com]

Cool, I get great veggies from 'em.

[shunra.livejournal.com]

Another option would be a huge drop in organic and so-called sustainable farming, which may or may not be sustainable on the scale required for feeding current population levels.

I hope our culture(s) find a solution for that.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

Our population is based in high-yield, industrialized farming, and there is no way to avoid that. All of mankind's history, since we stopped being nomadic, has been driven by increasing yields from farming. The fact that we have 'organic' farms and other lower yield farming methods is a conceit due to our quality of living. Such systems could not feed the world's population, but it can feed a relative handful of the population of rich countries. There just isn't enough arable land for it to work - we can't go backward, not without a massive population decrease.

It reminds me of a book I read a few years ago, The Axemaker's Gift, which was based on the premise that once we picked up tools (the axe) and started modifying the world we set off down a one-way path in a feedback loop. We are where we are because of irreversible changes we've made to our environment and culture, and we're wholly dependent on our technology to sustain ourselves. There is no going back without massive, terrible upheaval.

[antonia-tiger.livejournal.com]

The big cost for food production is fertiliser.

Here's some current figures from the UK, with longer-term charts at the bottom of the page. (http://www.mdcdatum.org.uk/FarmDataPrices/fertiliserprices.html) It's getting astonishingly close to GBP 500 per tonne for ammonium nitrate

UK grain prices are currently running at GBP 147.60 per tonne.

When I was still farming, the price per tonne for wheat and ammonium nitrate was about the same.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

You might be interested in the Tagari farming system. It's extremely high-yield, high-intensity farming, organic out of necessity (it was developed for small-holder farmers in developing countries, with no cash for pesticides). If used everywhere, it could feed the world many times over, with no increase in arable land - however, every single person in the world would have to work on the farms, as it is highly unsuited for mechanization.

One of the biochemistry professors at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College implemented a version of in central Nova Scotia (45 degrees N, clay soil, cool damp climate, 90-day growing season). I was one of the students labouring with hand tools to keep it running. Yields were IMMENSE; with just a 5-hectare plot, we kept the local food banks overflowing with fresh vegetables all summer. Very hard work, though - I looked like the Hulk at the end of the summer, and one of the female students had arms bigger than most people's thighs.

[rhonan.livejournal.com]

Peak meat? I'd better learn to hunt.

[zonereyrie.livejournal.com]

If everyone has to work the land, to that me means it is not a viable option. That would be a massive step backwards to me, going back to being an agrarian culture and putting everyone on the farms. Sounds like Mao's revolution.

[resonant.livejournal.com]

Hopefully not that bad (my ex's parents lived through that) - just stating it as a short-term [generations, not millenia] alternative to mass starvation and total collapse of civilization as we know it.